Content introduction chapter I. Communicative language teaching prioritizes developing students’ communication and interaction skills

Topicality of the research
Today, communities are increasingly facing rapid and profound changes and tensions that affect the social, economic, and political aspects of life. The role of education has also become questionable in the millennial era. A matter of fact, 21st century education requires a gradual shift in curriculum construction focusing on the transferable competencies that learners need to develop in instructional settings. In today’s knowledge-based, types of skills and competencies that students need to gain are different from in the past. Emphasizing the communicative competence is one of the most influential developments in language education. The implementation of communicative activities in EFL/ESL classroom prepares learners to use English in the world beyond based on their own needs, interests and opportunities.
Aim of the research
The main purpose behind communicative language teaching methods is to prepare students to be confident communicators in different real-life contexts, through repetitive oral practices and student-student cooperation. In CLT, communication is the end and the means of the teaching method.

Scientific scrutiny of the research
This study explores the challenges in implementing the scientific approach perceived by the EFL pre-service teachers and investigates the EFL pre-service teachers’ strategies to overcome the challenges. This research applied a descriptive qualitative design with the in-depth interview as the data collection method. This study was conducted at the English Language Education Department (ELED) at a private university in Yogyakarta with 5 EFL pre-service teachers who employed the scientific approach in their teaching practices when doing their internship program as the participants.
Novelty of the research
Differentiation between two ways (strong and weak versions) of development of students’ communicative abilities can also be found. The distinction lies in variance of ways of the English language acquisition by students, including those of technical specialities. The work contains lists of peculiarities of explicit/implicit learning and teaching with the help of communicative language teaching (CLT). Their positive sides and weaknesses are considered. Three central areas of explicit-implicit teaching – focus on form and form-focused instruction, fluency and automation, formulaic language – are also reviewed.